


Proud

by samothrace



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-07
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-16 02:21:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10561794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samothrace/pseuds/samothrace
Summary: Hardy feels proud of all Ellie’s journey. Set on 03x06





	

**Author's Note:**

> Just a bit of what Hardy was thinking of while Ellie was saying all that brilliant speech of being a woman detective and how much she worked hard to be there :)

Suspicions about Ed Burnett intensified and things got worse when DC Hartford claimed to be his daughter. Everything could be lost now if they knew she was in the investigation. He could not lose again. It would be more a case to carry on his back as a penance, and perhaps this time he could not bear it. Yes, he tended to blame himself for everything even when it was not his fault.

Hardy had to take a deep breath several times while waiting for DC with Miller. From where they were, he could see the waves following their routine of dying on the beach, retreating, and dying again. The cliffs were still waiting unharmed in the sand as a silent spectator of the resolutions he and Miller needed to make.

He did not have to say anything. Miller said all that was needed. In that situation, indeed, the voice space was Miller's. Seeing Hathford's failure was delicate because they were both part of the small group of women who worked at the police station. All of Hathford's unpreparedness was an absurd contrast to Hardy's greatest definition of efficiency in Miller. Do not report kinship, deal with a suspect and perhaps leak information that would also compromise the safety of the victim ...

Hearing all of Miller's speech made Hardy think he did not know her, in fact. There was so much of her that he wanted to know. There was more to her than these last turbulent years, she was never just what Joe did. A whole career track record that she chose and why, all the dense sexism that permeated that job. Being DI while the job position should be hers anguished him too. For all that had happened, Ellie had responded with an extremely clean job. She was a detective of singular insight, in whom he had trusted Sandbrook because he could no longer maintain the necessary rationality. Although she was the only person he would trust to pursue the case, she was also his hope.

Hearing her speak was also a warning sign. Ellie was under pressure as much as he was. Maybe more than him as a woman. The case affected her, and Hardy sometimes ignored that fact, or did not know how to deal with it, how to help her. The whole experience with Tess as DS and the terrible ending of betrayal made him totally discredit anyone else who would work with him. But Ellie deserved total trust. She protected the case as much as he did, and in the silence of their job, it was her actions that confirmed that they followed the same principles.

But, especially now, Hardy was filled with pride. In recent years, Ellie had been the first person to have been kind to him in years when he arrived in Broadchurch. She used to have that naive look he'd forgotten he'd had at the beginning, a look that had been destroyed by the first crimes he'd encountered. The timing of the trial and the days in that blue house revving Sandbrook's evidences revealed an Ellie of uncontrollable strength. A force he had also forgotten to have. He was already destroyed, defeated by the case, almost drowning. She stirred the past and brought to the surface just how much he had lost in his life. Ellie's anger could be fuel for both.

And now, though she was still struggling, she was the sum of all her personalities. It was not about evolution, ‘cause she was admirable from the very beginning. Its strength was added to the other, and Ellie Miller was that multiplicity. That, in spite of all the painful storm, she still kept her principles intacts. It balances all the complex feelings in this new configuration. And it was the complete figure that Hardy was contemplating now, cut into the blue sky of the city, which was hers by right.


End file.
